Random ramblings and observations

Yes or No?

I live in Canada so news of the impending Scottish Referendum does not feature very heavily, if at all, over here. Even the BBC World News app I have on my iPhone doesn’t cover a huge amount of it so I find I get all my news from articles posted on Facebook by friends and family back home. The ‘Yes/No’ vote is due to happen next Thursday and from what I’ve been told things are heating up and getting just plain nasty.

I’ve tried to read as many articles and news reports as I can to try and get a better sense of both sides of the story but I just can’t. To me there really isn’t a ground-breaking reason why Scotland should separate and at the same time the ‘Better Together’ camp doesn’t seem to have a absolute reason why Scotland should not become independent except to say it would be bad all round.

What I have started to see is the ridiculous emotion behind the Yes camp; a bunch of bullies and troublemakers. Horror stories are flooding news articles of people tearing down posters, vandalizing voters homes and heckling canvasser’s. Some of the Yes voters are nothing short of selfish, arrogant, immature bullies who really don’t give a s**t about the actual benefit of independence; they just hate England and everything English. There is something pure Braveheart about the whole thing and I curse Mel Gibson for making that stupid movie! I have spoken to friends who have lived in Scotland for decades and they are being targeted just because they don’t have a Scottish accent. How pathetic. Is that really the driving force behind all this?

The Better Together camp is now panicking because the numbers (if you believe statistics) are very, very close. All of a sudden there is a possibility that the Yes camp might actually win. There is one possibility though – due to the nature of the Yes campaigners, the active destruction of anything No, there could be a surge of unheard No votes that could knock the whole thing down. Although afraid to visibly show their union support, voting day could potentially show Scotland exactly how it’s residents feel. Scotland has been a part of the union for over 300 years and to have it broken would be a sad day so I really, really, REALLY hope that if that happens, the men in charge know exactly what they are doing because there is no turning back. (If they tried, they would probably get the coldest shoulder ever from the rest of the country.)

I live in Canada but my home is Thurso, Scotland. It’s where my family, born and raised for over 500 years, have come from. Clan Sinclair have been in Scotland since 1160. I have family members who have made it their life’s work to better their community and country through good times and bad and all that could be rejected all because of an accent. I am proud of my family heritage and I will not have a die-hard Braveheart nutter tell me otherwise. I am also proud of my countries capital, I am proud of it’s accomplishments and it’s strengths. The UK has faced two world wars as a UNITED front, it has shown the rest of the world it works as a Union, not as a separate entity. Why destroy that?